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Hi all, I'm the original poster. I felt encouraged to do a Show HN for Paper Time after seeing positive feedback in a different, side projects related thread a

Hi all, I'm the original poster. I felt encouraged to do a Show HN for Paper Time after seeing positive feedback in a different, side projects related thread a few days back [1]. I'll be around for a while so go ahead and ask me any questions, either around the idea or the technical parts. A big shout out to the folks on HN who responded with very pertinent resources about UI design a few months back [2], when I'd just started building this. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28033440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28033440 [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26932020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26932020

soothseer 5y ago
nice abstraction for listening to abstracts! would really like a "curated playlist" option. The ability to filter based on "Topics" is a step in that direction and a further vetting down of options will make the app more usable. nitpick: the TTS ends up pronouncing the markup as well. maybe the abstract can be cleaned before being passed through the TTS-generator. eg. for the line: "This paper concerns designing distributed algorithms that are {\em singularly optimal}" the "em" ends up on the audio and is confusing. refer: https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.02197 https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.02197 (also, ability to permalink to the paper on the papertime.app will help.)
- pramodbiligiri 5y ago
  Haha, had never thought of it as an abstraction over abstracts! Thanks for the detailed feedback. The TTS cleanup ought to become one of my top priorities. I’ve heard a lot of $k$ (dollar k dollar) is etc. I’m guessing it’s LaTeX markup bleeding over into the abstract text rendering somehow. I am not able to figure out how to curate a list, since I’m just processing Arxiv papers as they come in! One option is to provide papers accepted at conferences. Another is to let people upvote, but I fear voting dynamics can get messy. Also, without sufficient users, voting isn’t of much use. I’ll see how I can implement permalinks. I’m not too familiar with doing that in single page apps so I need to work on it. Related question: would you like to be able to star/bookmark papers so that you can come back to them?
bArray 5y ago
Great work! Some other feature recommendations: 1. A daily RSS feed - perhaps it could compile them into a 'single' podcast. 2. Human voice uploads - allow readers to upload their own voice (would require moderation - but would solve most pronunciation issues caused by TTS). You could randomly assign some number of articles to each moderator to read. Again, great work - this has given me some ideas!
- pramodbiligiri 5y ago
  Thanks! Daily RSS feed sounds like a good idea. RSS used to have the concept of media enclosures or something. Perhaps if I can embed the audio into that, people can listen right there? On the other hand, that will have fewer people visiting the website :D Heh. 2. My somewhat long term product idea is to let the paper submitters volunteer to read out their abstracts, if they choose. But some amount of automated TTS will always remain, given the sheer volume of content.
  - bArray 5y ago
    > RSS used to have the concept of media enclosures or something. Yes, and 'show notes'. What you can do in theory is embed advertising there, or in the audio itself if you need to monetize.
mcintyre1994 5y ago
Nice, looks great! Could you give any thoughts on which of those resources in [2] were particularly useful for you? I have a similar backend background and interest in learning about UI design! BTW a small issue but opening and closing your FAQ modal seems to be pushing URL history - which means you have to hit back repeatedly to exit the page if you interact with it. It doesn’t look like having the modal open and then going back closes it, so I think you could just drop the URL push without losing functionality.
- pramodbiligiri 5y ago
  Refactoring UI was a great resource that was recommended on that Ask HN. The authors have a book and some videos. Very actionable and systematic advice. That formed the basis of my understanding. For more specific techniques, the Learning Web Design 5th Edition (by Jenna Something) is very good. I skimmed Don’t Make Me Think, which validated some of my own thoughts and helps you avoid silly oversights. I also read Design of Everyday Things but found it very lengthy and somewhat pompous. Not sure that I got much out of it. On that page someone has linked to a bunch of MIT material. I didn’t check that out in detail. Might be good... I don’t know. Thanks for the bug report on the modal. Would have never noticed as I navigate to my site directly and never click the Back button there.
LoveMortuus 5y ago
How come there are no Biology or Chemistry topics to choose?
- pramodbiligiri 5y ago
  Hi LoveMortuus, I have started off with CS papers only, and that too only a small subset of that (that’s why the website’s tag line says CS Research). May come around to adding more in due course. Is BioArxiv a good source of papers?

soothseer 5y ago

nice abstraction for listening to abstracts! would really like a "curated playlist" option. The ability to filter based on "Topics" is a step in that direction and a further vetting down of options will make the app more usable. nitpick: the TTS ends up pronouncing the markup as well. maybe the abstract can be cleaned before being passed through the TTS-generator. eg. for the line: "This paper concerns designing distributed algorithms that are {\em singularly optimal}" the "em" ends up on the audio and is confusing. refer: https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.02197 https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.02197 (also, ability to permalink to the paper on the papertime.app will help.)

pramodbiligiri 5y ago
Haha, had never thought of it as an abstraction over abstracts! Thanks for the detailed feedback. The TTS cleanup ought to become one of my top priorities. I’ve heard a lot of $k$ (dollar k dollar) is etc. I’m guessing it’s LaTeX markup bleeding over into the abstract text rendering somehow. I am not able to figure out how to curate a list, since I’m just processing Arxiv papers as they come in! One option is to provide papers accepted at conferences. Another is to let people upvote, but I fear voting dynamics can get messy. Also, without sufficient users, voting isn’t of much use. I’ll see how I can implement permalinks. I’m not too familiar with doing that in single page apps so I need to work on it. Related question: would you like to be able to star/bookmark papers so that you can come back to them?

bArray 5y ago

Great work! Some other feature recommendations: 1. A daily RSS feed - perhaps it could compile them into a 'single' podcast. 2. Human voice uploads - allow readers to upload their own voice (would require moderation - but would solve most pronunciation issues caused by TTS). You could randomly assign some number of articles to each moderator to read. Again, great work - this has given me some ideas!

pramodbiligiri 5y ago
Thanks! Daily RSS feed sounds like a good idea. RSS used to have the concept of media enclosures or something. Perhaps if I can embed the audio into that, people can listen right there? On the other hand, that will have fewer people visiting the website :D Heh. 2. My somewhat long term product idea is to let the paper submitters volunteer to read out their abstracts, if they choose. But some amount of automated TTS will always remain, given the sheer volume of content.
- bArray 5y ago
  > RSS used to have the concept of media enclosures or something. Yes, and 'show notes'. What you can do in theory is embed advertising there, or in the audio itself if you need to monetize.

mcintyre1994 5y ago

Nice, looks great! Could you give any thoughts on which of those resources in [2] were particularly useful for you? I have a similar backend background and interest in learning about UI design! BTW a small issue but opening and closing your FAQ modal seems to be pushing URL history - which means you have to hit back repeatedly to exit the page if you interact with it. It doesn’t look like having the modal open and then going back closes it, so I think you could just drop the URL push without losing functionality.

pramodbiligiri 5y ago
Refactoring UI was a great resource that was recommended on that Ask HN. The authors have a book and some videos. Very actionable and systematic advice. That formed the basis of my understanding. For more specific techniques, the Learning Web Design 5th Edition (by Jenna Something) is very good. I skimmed Don’t Make Me Think, which validated some of my own thoughts and helps you avoid silly oversights. I also read Design of Everyday Things but found it very lengthy and somewhat pompous. Not sure that I got much out of it. On that page someone has linked to a bunch of MIT material. I didn’t check that out in detail. Might be good... I don’t know. Thanks for the bug report on the modal. Would have never noticed as I navigate to my site directly and never click the Back button there.

LoveMortuus 5y ago

How come there are no Biology or Chemistry topics to choose?

pramodbiligiri 5y ago
Hi LoveMortuus, I have started off with CS papers only, and that too only a small subset of that (that’s why the website’s tag line says CS Research). May come around to adding more in due course. Is BioArxiv a good source of papers?